The WBAL TV 11 News I-Team uncovered new information about the fights on the Fourth of July that turned Baltimore's Inner Harbor into a chaotic scene that took 30 minutes for police to control.

Court documents, written by police when they made arrests of people allegedly involved in the fight, showed the information is a different story from the explanation offered by police and City Hall at the time.

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The documents indicated what started the problem wasn't just too many people trying to leave at the same time, but an attempt by gangs to show their muscles.

The chaotic scene captured by 11 News shortly after the Fourth of July fireworks at the Inner Harbor included fights, people scrambling to get away and police struggling to get control.

The following day, a police spokesman said the trouble started when police tried to move the big crowd along.

"A lot of time we have problems with people not ready to leave when it's time to leave, and that's what really ignited it," said Troy Harris of the Baltimore City Police Department.

At the time, Mayor Martin O'Malley also said the size of the crowd was the problem, and then blamed the media.

"Whenever you have a big crowd, sometimes things like that will happen, and then you guys need to decide how often you want to replay the tape," he said.

What police and the mayor didn't talk about in responding to the incident was the information contained in a court document, written early in the morning of July 5, hours before they made their statements.

In the document, a city police detective said what he and other officers saw that night was "a large crowd of males and females holding up gang hand signs." The detective said they also saw "an elderly woman in a wheelchair trapped in the center of the crowd."

As police moved in to help, the detective wrote, "Members of the crowd began to shout L-UP and Blaat, known to be gang slang used by the member of the Blood gang set called L-Gang."

The incident escalated, the detective said, when a young woman started pointing a firework device at people not associated with the gang, causing them to run.

As police moved in on the woman, the detective said "suspected Blood members that had surrounded the detective struck him in the back of the head."

The police department's top spokesman told 11 News Wednesday that 11 News inquiries are the first he'd heard of any gang connection to the Fourth of July incident.

Sources tell 11 News the incident that night is just one example of the growing problem of gangs in Baltimore -- a problem often related to violence.